Wheels

YOUNG CAR ENTHUSIASTS are being royally dudded. That’s the message we hear these days. To really rub it in, they’re teased with the greatest ever access to information on the cars they’ll never be able to afford. They can watch hour after hour of Youtube videos, they can pore over spec sheets, dream over car classifieds and research every last detail of their dream car’s development story while feeling that gut-cramping realisation that they’re never likely to own one. Wage stagnation, cost of living and inflationary effects on new car pricing have combined to put the sort of cars that were once valid targets for a young’un on a reasonable wicket well out of reach. That’s what we’re told anyway. Here at Wheels, we don’t like taking things as read, so…

FRESH FACTS THINGS WE LEARNED IN THE CAR WORLD THIS MONTH 1. Renault has confirmed that it is set to import the Dacia Duster in H2 of 2025. To be badged as a Renault, it’ll be offered in both FWD and 4x4, with prices starting at around $40k. The three-star Euro NCAP rating may affect take up. 2. At a recent Tesla earnings call, Elon Musk talked of the unintended consequences of Full Self Driving. “Right now we’re in this perverse situation…where people actually go to manual driving to check their text messages so the computer doesn’t yell at them.” 3. Honda’s latest ultimatum to Nissan in order to get its partnership back on track? Ditch current CEO Makoto Uchida, who Honda feels has not fully appreciated the parlous state…

SCHUMI BLACKMAIL PLOTTER BEHIND BARS Yilmaz Tozturkan, 53, has been sentenced to three years in jail by a court in Germany after being found guilty of threatening to upload over 1500 confidential documents to the dark web relating to the condition of former F1 world champion, Michael Schumacher. Tozturkan’s son, Daniel Lins, was also implicated and will serve a six-month suspended sentence. The leak of the documents was facilitated by a former Schumacher security staff member, Markus Fritsche, who offered to digitise files for the Schumacher family. He received a two-year suspended sentence. Schumacher has not been seen in public since a 2013 ski accident resulted in serious brain injuries. His family have kept news of his condition private. Of the two hard drives containing the stolen data, one has…

A NEW BMW M3 remains a genuine event. While most of us are media-saturated these days to the extent that we barely looked up when the latest version of the 911 GT3 was announced, BMW is planning the biggest change to the M3 formula to date, and it’s something that certainly got our attention. The big news that you probably knew already is that because it’ll be built on the Neue Klasse chassis, it’s a pure battery-electric vehicle. Yet BMW, as has been their strategy to date, is hedging and has vowed to follow it up with a twin-turbo six-cylinder petrol version. BMW recently displayed the Vision Driving Experience, a prototype that acts as a mobile test bed for much of the tech that will end up in the Neue Klasse,…

CRANKING DOWN Conrod Straight towards 280km/h is something you never forget. So, too, the riotous celebrations at the end of a classic Bathurst 12-Hour race. And then there is the global unveiling of a high-performance family car – with a twist. Did I mention Valentino Rossi? Mount Panorama became more like Munich on the first weekend of February, as BMW went all-in on the first major Australian motorsport event of the year. It created a Forrest Gump event with an automotive ‘box of chocolates’ where you never knew what was coming next. It began with the global unveiling of the latest M3 CS Touring, wrapped around a two-car entry with the M4 GT3 EVO in the 12-Hour contest, and finished with a preview drive of the all-new M5V8 hybrid. The…

“How did we get so jaded about the future of the car?” WHILE deferring some essential work duties in order to brainlessly scroll my phone for a while, I came across an argument on social media where somebody asked which of the current crop of new cars we could reasonably expect to be modern classics in a few years’ time. I started mentally prepping a shortlist and came up very short. I then started scanning the online responses and many commenters thought that no contemporary cars could reach classic status, largely due to their electronics going out of date, effectively making them impossible to work on and run. How did we get so jaded about the future of the car? Paul Williams, Avalon Beach, NSW If the reward is there,…